heretic888
Senior Master
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- Oct 25, 2002
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From a recent post by Wayne Muromoto on e-budo about this very subject:
"[...]A matter of terminology. A spy can be anybody who is willing to do espionage work for you. The stoolie on the corner. The prostitute hanging out on Hotel Street in Honolulu. The Iraqi informant. Pay 'em enough and they'll rat out somebody for you.
But someone who supposedly plied his trade in the 'art of ninjutsu,' per a ninjutsu ryu, was usually a samurai, albeit from varying (and often lower) classes: Jizamurai, or those 'country bumpkin' samurai out in the boondocks, warriors who were adept at espionage and information gathering, trained warriors from specific ryu who had skill in certain unorthodox methods, etc. There's a difference. If you are talking about recognized ninjutsu ryu, such as the historic Koga and Iga, their systems came from warrior clans; the various jizamurai families who made up the Koga, or the Iga headed by the Hattori.
Hattori Hanzo became one of Ieyasu's leading military advisors. At the time of Oda Nobunaga's death, Hattori Hanzo was already a minor daimyo of a fief worth 3,000 koku, so he was a 'samurai' even before becoming a direct retainer of Ieyasu. Even in Hanzo's father's era, the Hattori used various 'kashin' (samurai retainers) for espionage and guerrilla attacks in conjunction with their allies and superiors' battles, most notably at the Battle of Anegawa and Sambogahara, in which they furnished some 600 warriors for a night attack. For his work as a samurai, the Tokugawa gave Hanzo the nickname 'Oni Hanzo,' and considered him one of the three great braves of the Tokugawa alliance.
('Lord Tokugawa has great samurai, lo!...
Hattori Hanzo is Oni (demon) Hanzo,
Watanabe Hanzo is Yari (spear) Hanzo...
Akumi Gengo is Kubikiri (head cutting) Gengo!'
--From the Mikawa Monogatari
The book I am grazing into (Ninja No Seikatsu by Yamaguchi Masayuki) notes that Tokugawa Ieyasu enlisted the Koga Bushidan early on in his career. Note 'bushidan.' It means a samurai army. Not a 'commoner's' army."
"[...]A matter of terminology. A spy can be anybody who is willing to do espionage work for you. The stoolie on the corner. The prostitute hanging out on Hotel Street in Honolulu. The Iraqi informant. Pay 'em enough and they'll rat out somebody for you.
But someone who supposedly plied his trade in the 'art of ninjutsu,' per a ninjutsu ryu, was usually a samurai, albeit from varying (and often lower) classes: Jizamurai, or those 'country bumpkin' samurai out in the boondocks, warriors who were adept at espionage and information gathering, trained warriors from specific ryu who had skill in certain unorthodox methods, etc. There's a difference. If you are talking about recognized ninjutsu ryu, such as the historic Koga and Iga, their systems came from warrior clans; the various jizamurai families who made up the Koga, or the Iga headed by the Hattori.
Hattori Hanzo became one of Ieyasu's leading military advisors. At the time of Oda Nobunaga's death, Hattori Hanzo was already a minor daimyo of a fief worth 3,000 koku, so he was a 'samurai' even before becoming a direct retainer of Ieyasu. Even in Hanzo's father's era, the Hattori used various 'kashin' (samurai retainers) for espionage and guerrilla attacks in conjunction with their allies and superiors' battles, most notably at the Battle of Anegawa and Sambogahara, in which they furnished some 600 warriors for a night attack. For his work as a samurai, the Tokugawa gave Hanzo the nickname 'Oni Hanzo,' and considered him one of the three great braves of the Tokugawa alliance.
('Lord Tokugawa has great samurai, lo!...
Hattori Hanzo is Oni (demon) Hanzo,
Watanabe Hanzo is Yari (spear) Hanzo...
Akumi Gengo is Kubikiri (head cutting) Gengo!'
--From the Mikawa Monogatari
The book I am grazing into (Ninja No Seikatsu by Yamaguchi Masayuki) notes that Tokugawa Ieyasu enlisted the Koga Bushidan early on in his career. Note 'bushidan.' It means a samurai army. Not a 'commoner's' army."
